juxtaposition
by Kaist
Summary: Sometimes, the truth is better left in the dark.


She remembers everything about her mother with agonizing clarity.

It isn't something she consciously acknowledges, not like she does her devotion to her father. It's stealthy, springing up in the moments when quietness seeps into her raging thoughts and she takes the rare step back and lets herself drift to the past- some flash of her mother sears through her mind like a brand and on this particular day she freezes, going rigid right in the middle of a conversation with Inigo.

He notices, of course. And- being Inigo- he asks what's wrong.

"Nothing," Lucina says quickly, and pushes past him. And when she's back in her tent she lets herself shake and put a hand against the tent post and tries not to cry over _this, _not when she's seen her kingdom burn and her people perish while she fought and bled and screamed orders with her parents' shadows in her mind, sat with the other child soldiers fighting a war that should never have been, dozed in the lulls between battles and listened to them pretend that there was cavalry waiting in the wings to swoop in and save them.

Lucina remembers many things about Robin, grandmaster tactician of Ylisse, the king's wife. She remembers Robin the mother. She remembers quiet, caring words and mended cuts and bruises, remembers solemn conversations and a right hand always, _always _covered with a glove.

She remembers a woman who was so very _careful _with Lucina, like she might accidentally break her with words.

Lucina is her father's child without a doubt. Even now, she shares a closer bond with Chrom than she does Robin. But Lucina remembers, and thinks that in hindsight- _in hindsight- _she should've known all along.

(_Lucina, _her memories whisper, _Lucina, gods,_ Lucina,_ what have I done? _and she flinches away like she's been burned.)

* * *

Lucina is seven when she begins listening in on Father's verdicts on issues brought to him.

"It's not _right," _Lucina snarls one day after a particularly hard dispute, stomping into the room.

Robin looks at her fuming daughter (little face twisted in a scowl with a fire lit in her eyes, looking uncannily like Chrom on the rare occasions he is truly angered) with some trepidation. Lucina is a solemn child, usually, and her rage rarely manifests as it has today. "There are shades of gray sometimes, Lucina."

Lucina considers this, and looks up at her mother with flashing eyes. "Sometimes there shouldn't be."

Robin stops, silence hanging in the air between them, and closes her mouth. She wonders how to help, how to speak, as she rocks Morgan in her arms. Too long passes and Lucina stomps out again.

Her daughter's footsteps echo in the corridors.

"What am I supposed to do?" Robin mumbles, sitting down and kneading her forehead with one hand. Morgan coos and babbles, trying to attract her attention in his little too-smart baby way, but a sudden headache (migrane, really) is lancing through her temples. She squeezes her eyes shut, clutching her forehead tighter. "G-gah..."

Morgan's burbles are only background noise, insignificant next to the sharp, fierce throbs of pain- like someone pounding on a door.

* * *

Lucina is nearly eleven and by now pads around the castle with poorly concealed worry. Today she stands near a wall and is paying very careful attention to Father as he ducks Vaike's axe and lunges for the man, scoring a glancing blow before Vaike jumps back and tries again_. _After all, if Lucina's going to be just like Father she'll need to be able to fight like he does: efficiently and masterfully.

Not to mention that she suspects that he won't be around as often soon. Sooner than the people around the castle say when she voices the niggling uncertainty she's been carrying around ever since Mother started to look more drawn and Father's face got grimmer every time he exited the strategy room. Lucina is a child, but she's a more _perceptive_ child than they think.

Robin _is _her mother. And Chrom (_Father, _she thinks, and her posture unconsciously straightens in pride) is no slouch either.

Lucina hears the whispers, the rumors in the halls, her parents whispering as they put her and Morgan (_Mother's shadow_, Father will call him) down to sleep. Ylisse will go to war, taking her parents with it, and Lucina will have little else to do but study, care for Morgan, and... wait. Wait and worry.

She restrains the tears that threaten to come at the thought. She has- will have- a _duty, _and that duty is to watch over the castle and her brother until her parents safely return. Her expression hardens like iron (not steel, not yet), and she returns her attention to the match.

Robin, in the shadows of the hall beyond the courtyard, bites her lip and prays that this new situation with Valm won't come to a head.

She doesn't have much hope.

* * *

Lucina is sixteen and her world is ending.

Her coronation comes just a mere day after the word does, and she can see her fingers shaking as she looks down at the people moving in the square below her- sees the terror in their eyes, sees the people trusting a mere girl to _save them save them save them. _Protect them from the monster in the night that felled her parents. Agony lances through her like a knife, roots her to the spot.

Lucina cannot do this.

Lucina is not ready. Lucina will never be ready. Lucina is as terrified as they are.

Lucina _must _do this.

She closes her eyes and takes a shallow breath and thinks- _for Morgan- _because he's just behind her on the balcony and he's trying his damnedest not to sob and it's not working. She pushes everything else out, locks her grief in a cage, and squares her shoulders. The movement jostles Falchion at her hip, reminds her of the unfamiliar weight of it and the blood on the grip, but she does not have time for that.

The Exalt lifts one arm into the sky and speaks words of hope to the throng of people who are desperate for a savior.

* * *

Things get worse.

Morgan vanishes, leaving behind only a worn book of strategy.

Lucina muffles her screams into her pillow by night.

The Exalt leads her people to safety by day.

And Grima whispers on every wind.

* * *

Lucina is far from camp, scouting out the mountain path before anyone else comes. The others- Gerome and Owain most insistently- tell her not to do this. They say she's risking herself unnecessarily. They're right.

But she needs to get away for a little while if she wants to stay sane.

So she says she'd not let her people do something she was unwilling to do and she assures them that she'll be _just fine _because she will save these people. She will. She will not abandon them for death- it would be the coward's way out to do such a thing, she says.

They acquiesce eventually, and she doesn't let herself think it's because maybe they can see her cracking around the edges.

"Lucina," a voice whispers, and her heart nearly stops. Because she _knows _this voice.

Almost unwillingly, the ruler of Ylisse turns to face her mother.

Robin looks pale, haggard, and tired. Her clothes are ragged and though Lucina can see no wounds, she thinks there _must _be for anyone to look so pallid. But what strikes her is the slump of Robin's shoulders, the desolation thick and heavy in her eyes. "Mother...?" Lucina breathes in confusion, reaching out to brush Robin's face, but the older woman scrambles back.

"I'm sorry," Robin says. Her voice is brittle and broken and Lucina doesn't know what could _possibly _make her mother like- like _this. _Mother had been everything but _defeated. _"Can't let you touch me. He'll know I'm here."

"What?" What she really means to say is _who, _but somehow, it doesn't come out right. Shock makes her tongue heavy in her mouth.

"Gnnh-" The former tactician squeezes her eyes shut and seizes her head. Her form ripples like water on a stormy day, and Lucina stumbles back with a gasp. "Lucina... listen to me. Don't come over this pass. Grima will reach this place in a fortnight. Take your people and... _go_. Run. You don't have much time."

"B-but- ah, what about you, Mother? Surely you'll come with-?"

Robin makes a noise like Lucina's stabbing her with words and shakes her head violently. "I can't. Lucina, _run. _Please."

"Why?" Lucina cries, and everything she's pushed into a dark corner of her mind over the last year tumbles out in that single word. Why didn't Mother come home? Where has the woman been all this time while her children have needed her? "Mother, _why can't you come?"_

"I'm fading," Robin says quietly. Tiredly. As if to prove her words, she ripples and flickers again. "There isn't much time for me. Go now, Lucina."

And only because she can feel the growing _wrongness _in the air- only because of the strangely _dangerous_ look on her mother's face does Lucina turn and flee. There's no time for her to think as she makes fevered orders and mobilizes her troops to get the refugees moving and tells the Shepherds that it's time to take up an old ally on her offer, and maybe that's why she doesn't put the pieces together until far, far later.

* * *

_"Lucina," _Grima cries, abject misery so profound that they stop short. _"Lucina, gods, _Lucina, _what have I done?"_

Lucina's blood goes colder than ice.

And for the second time, her world shatters.

Her comrades are forced to drag her back, away, away, to live and fight another day. Nobody asks, and if any of them put the pieces together, they show no signs of it. Because Lucina does not speak of it- and, Gerome thinks, _she doesn't want to believe it. _

Nobody else wants to, either.

Who would _want _to believe that one of the greatest heroes of the previous age had fallen so far?

* * *

In the twilit streets of the last safe haven from Grima, the one place he hadn't found a way into yet, she had wondered if maybe- just maybe- there had been a way to stop it all before it had even started.

_That way lies madness, _Gerome had said, but she hadn't thought so. She had gone rushing to Naga the moment she had a plan and Naga had delivered.

Fifteen hours later, she was saving her teenage aunt from the Risen.

"Lucina?" Robin's alive, _unbroken _voice calls from outside the tent. "Are you alright? Inigo told me that you seemed out of sorts..."

Lucina chokes down the sob that threatens to escape from her throat, because whoever she is now, in another life she was the Exalt. So she straightens her spine, picks up a slim, worn book and throws the tent flap open with a soldier's carelessness and sends her past-yet-not mother a brief smile. "Quite fine, Mother. I simply forgot my book- I've been enjoying reading about the Hero-King during the evenings. Have you ever read of him?"

She is still achingly, dangerously uncertain around her mother, despite having both her forgiveness and Chrom's for what she had almost done. The idea of her father dying again nearly causes her physical pain- as does the very real possibility that her mother will fall once more. It's nearly impossible to reconcile without taking action, but this younger, warmer woman, a woman who Lucina has fought alongside, has somehow managed to inspire hope in her.

And so Lucina focuses on Robin's words and not the swirling, raging tide of emotion that tears at her. She came to _change _it all. She came to defy fate.

They will find a way this time.

In a world where Grima was defeated long before she could walk and talk, little Lucina will not have to grow up and lead a country. Not until she's ready.

She'll live a happier life than Lucina has.

_("Lucina shouldn't have to grow up without parents," Chrom says, hands on his wife's shoulders, gaze on the child in her arms._

_Robin nods, a reassuring smile blooming on her face. "She won't.")_


End file.
